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Play Guitar By Ear: Learning to Hear the Perfect Fourth interval

By Mike Hayes | June 28, 2010

Technically speaking intervals are a way of measuring musical
’space’ between notes, guitar players are often overwhelmed by
the technical names of intervals such as ‘major third’ or ‘minor
third’ but once the student begins to grasp a few basic concepts
about intervals the whole thing starts to make sense and ear
training becomes a logic process that’s heaps of fun.

Traditionally, intervals are usually presented as two separate
notes as they occur in melodies of songs; however an often
overlooked musical fact is that intervals can also be played as a
mini- chord (two notes); in fact from a guitarist’s perspective
that’s probably a good place to start.

The first thing to understand about ear training is that it’s an
ongoing study you never finish learning and listening to musical
sounds played both individually and as a coagulation of tones.

Previously I have covered the intervals of major third, minor
third and perfect fifth today in this ear training session we
will focus on the perfect fourth (ascending) interval. There is
also an interval named the perfect interval (descending) but
that’s for another session, only the perfect fourth (ascending)
interval will be presented in this article

Since this ear training session is primarily addressed to
guitarists I’ll begin our discussion with the harmonic fourth
sound (mini-chord) which has to be one of the most often played
harmonic intervals by guitarists.

Have you ever heard a song called ‘Smoke On The Water’? Unless
you have just arrived from the moon you must have heard or played
this song before; unfortunately as well as being one of the most
played songs it also has the dubious distinction of being one of
the most inaccurately played songs of all time.

When ‘Smoke On The Water’ is played correctly the first chord is
a harmonic fourth.

Harmonic fourth (power chord)

To hear a great example of the harmonic fourth listen to the
opening chord of ‘Smoke On The Water’ by Deep Purple.

Harmonic fourth – ‘Smoke On The Water’
——-
——-
–0—
–0—
——-
——-

This is the correct way to play ‘Smoke On The Water’, listen
carefully to the original recorded version of this song then play
the harmonic fourth as shown above and you will notice how it
matches exactly with the sound on the recording.

Now that you know what the interval of a perfect fourth sounds
like when played as a chord let’s work on being able to hear the
interval when played as single notes as it would be in a melody
of a song.

Begin with a reference pitch of middle ‘C’.

Middle ‘C’ reference pitch (third string; fifth fret)

——-
——-
–5—
——-
——-
——-

Next play the note ‘F’ on the second string; fret six

——-
–6—
——-
——-
——-
——-

Repeat that process, take plenty of time remember we want to
recognize this interval when it turns up in songs and solos
therefore the slower you play his exercise the better.

Playing by ear is really learning to play from memory we need to
make a conscious effort to listen to each note and how it relates
to the previous note. People who can play by ear have developed
an accurate ‘recall’ system by mentally filing sounds in their
memory so that they can rapidly identify that sound and it’s
location on the guitar fretboard.

Next play the two notes as a chord (harmonic fourth or power
chord)

Harmonic fourth

——-
–6—
–5—
——-
——-
——-

The harmonic fourth you have just played is in the key of ‘C’
whereas the harmonic fourth I presented for ‘Smoke On The Water’
is in the key of ‘G’ (the original recorded version); they are
exactly the same musical sound only presented in different keys
and played in a different octave.

Now to round off this introduction to perfect fourth intervals
here’s a short list of some tunes that begin with the perfect
fourth (ascending) interval

1. Here Comes The Bride (Wedding March)

2. Amazing Grace

3. Auld Lang Syne

4. All The Things You Are

5. Love Me Tender (Elvis Presley)

Try some ‘on the job training’ … next time you play a song ask
yourself what interval am I’m hearing; it’s fun to play this
game and the great news is that it doesn’t matter what type of
music you play the intervals are still the same so now it’s back
to playing your guitar.

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